As part of the Asian Century white paper, released in October, new national reforms aim to give students continuous access to a priority Asian language - Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese - by 2025.

However, with several recent incidents of racial abuse on public transport in Melbourne and Sydney, experts say these new reforms are now even more important.

"You can think in different ways because you see other ways of expressing yourself," he said.

"[Bilinguals and multilinguals] are more clever - they have better cognitive abilities which are beyond linguistics."

He says that while it is not the solution to racial discrimination, foreign language teaching does have positive benefits.

"Unfortunately, I do know racist people who are multilingual," he said.

"However, I would argue that, as a generalisation, the more languages you speak, the less likely you will be racist.

"Language is the window to a culture."

Data from the 2011 census shows that 19.3 per cent of the population speaks a language at home other than English.

Of that figure, 53 per cent are first-generation Australians.

However, the number declines to just 1.6 per cent where third-generation Australians and onwards are concerned.

Professor Zuckermann says it is important for Australians to preserve their heritage language.

"Most [people] totally forget their heritage language," he said.

"I think the monolingual mindset is actually very bad."

Head start

Queensland Teachers Union president Kevin Bates says schoolyard racial bullying is usually the result of misunderstanding rather than racism.

"With young people, they don't necessarily perceive race," he said.

"What they perceive is difference."

Paola Gonzalez, from the early childhood language centre AlphaTykes, says language education should ideally begin before a child steps foot into a primary school.

"The earlier they start learning a language, the better it is for everything," she said.

"[The children] become more accepting of people who speak other languages and more aware of cultural differences."

Having come to Australia from Colombia as a teacher, she says she was surprised to see how far behind Australia is in terms of language learning.

"I've had children afraid of speaking their parents' language in school because they don't see it as natural," she said.

"This is changing, but it's a long process."

Mr Bates says the Gonski reforms will form an important part in ensuring schools dealing with significant issues of cultural difference can be accommodated within a much greater resource pool.

He says there have been "very positive" community outreach programs in some schools, such as Inala State High School, and that more schools should receive the kind of funding that would make this possible.

"It's important in the Queensland community that we acknowledge that schools are dealing with very diverse cultural difference," he said.